Mozilla Firefox, Portable Edition

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Mozilla Firefox, Portable Edition
Developed by PortableApps.com
Latest release 2.0.0.14 / April 17, 2008
Preview release 3 RC 1 / May 16, 2008
OS Windows, Linux with Wine
Genre Web browser
License MPL, MPL/GPL/LGPL tri-license
Website Firefox Portable Website
Mozilla Firefox
(category)
Contents
Origins and Lineage
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Mozilla Firefox, Portable Edition (formerly known as Portable Firefox and commonly known as Firefox Portable) is a repackaged version of Mozilla Firefox created by John T. Haller. The program is included in the PortableApps Suite available at their website. [1] The application allows Firefox to be run from a USB flash drive, CDROM or other portable device on any Windows computer, Mac OS X computer or Linux/UNIX computer running Wine. The program does not require Firefox to be installed on the computer, nor does it leave personal information on the computer or interfere with any installed versions of Firefox, though installation on a hard drive is possible.

The current stable release is version 2.0.0.14, released on April 17, 2008. It is compatible with Windows 98, Me, 2000, XP and Vista as well as Wine on UNIX-based systems. The current unstable release is version 3 RC1 (based on Mozilla Firefox 3 RC1), released on May 16, 2008[2].

Contents

[edit] Changes from Mozilla Firefox

Firefox Portable retains all of Mozilla Firefox's abilities such as extensions and automatic updating. However, modifications have been made to the default settings to reduce the number of writes to the flash drive. The cache and browser history were previously disabled under the release of 2.0 (Firefox Portable's ability to delete cookies and the download history on exit is not enabled by default as per a licensing agreement with Mozilla).

Personal settings, bookmarks, plugins such as Flash and Shockwave, and any installed extensions and themes are stored on the flash drive along with Firefox Portable. As well as for personal use, Firefox Portable can be used to demonstrate the features of Mozilla Firefox to various audiences.

[edit] Features

  • PortableApps.com Launcher - Firefox Portable Launcher is included. It performs a number of functions including: adjustment of paths to external programs (mime types), adjustment of paths to local homepages, intelligent recreation of the component registry as you move drives, backup/restore of certain registry keys in certain instances, cleaning of folders and directories in certain instances, adjustment of some extension setting paths making non-portable extensions portable.
  • Default Profile - A default profile exists within the firefox directory with setting to improve portability.
  • No Default Browser Check - Firefox won't check to see if it is the default browser on startup.
  • Download Prompt - Firefox will ask where to save downloads.
  • No Disk Cache - The browser disk cache has been disabled to decrease disk size and the number of writes to the disk, increasing disk life.
  • Update Prompt - As updating the browser on a flash drive can be very slow, Firefox Portable asks you if you'd like to update rather than doing it automatically.
  • PortableApps.com Format - Firefox Portable is packaged in PortableApps.com Format with a PortableApps.com Installer. It allows for easy installation to a portable device, detection of existing installs of the PortableApps.com Platform, in-place upgrades allowing you to install a new version right over your existing one and tight integration with the PortableApps.com Menu.

[edit] See also

Free software Portal

[edit] References

  1. ^ PortableApps.com Suite
  2. ^ Firefox 3 Release Candidate now available for download

[edit] External links

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